Parameter shifts for nonautonomous systems in low dimension: Bifurcation- and Rate-induced tipping

TL;DR

This paper investigates how non-autonomous systems in low dimensions experience irreversible tipping due to parameter shifts, analyzing bifurcation diagrams and stable paths to predict rate-induced tipping phenomena.

Contribution

It introduces a framework linking bifurcation analysis of autonomous systems to tipping behavior in non-autonomous systems, including criteria for irreversible rate-induced tipping.

Findings

Unique local pullback point attractors correspond to stable equilibria.

Small rate parameter shifts allow tracking of stable equilibrium branches.

Larger rates can cause irreversible tipping, with criteria established for one-dimensional systems.

Abstract

We discuss the nonlinear phenomena of irreversible tipping for non-autonomous systems where time-varying inputs correspond to a smooth "parameter shift" from one asymptotic value to another. We express tipping in terms of pullback attraction and present some results on how nontrivial dynamics for non-autonomous systems can be deduced from analysis of the bifurcation diagram for an associated autonomous system where parameters are fixed. In particular, we show that there is a unique local pullback point attractor associated with each linearly stable equilibrium for the past limit. If there is a smooth stable branch of equilibria over the range of values of the parameter shift, the pullback attractor will remain close to (track) this branch for small enough rates, though larger rates may lead to rate-induced tipping. More generally, we show that one can track certain stable paths that go along several stable branches by pseudo-orbits of the system, for small enough rates. For these local pullback point attractors, we define notions of bifurcation-induced and irreversible rate-induced tipping of the non-autonomous system. In one-dimension, we give a number of sufficient conditions for the presence or absence of rate-induced tipping, and we discuss some applications of our results to give criteria for irreversible rate-induced tipping in a conceptual climate model example.